WILMINGTON, MA — The Wilmington Middle School Drama Club presents its spring musical, “Seussicial The Musical” on Thursday, March 21, 2019 (7pm); Friday, March 22, 2019 (7pm); and Saturday, March 23, 2019 (1pm) in the Wilmington Middle School Auditorium.Come enjoy the story of Horton and some of our favorite Dr. Seuss characters. Tickets are available at the door. Tickets cost $10 for adults and $7 for students (12 and under).Like Wilmington Apple on Facebook. Follow Wilmington Apple on Twitter. Follow Wilmington Apple on Instagram. Subscribe to Wilmington Apple’s daily email newsletter HERE. Got a comment, question, photo, press release, or news tip? Email wilmingtonapple@gmail.com.Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:Like Loading… RelatedWilmington Middle School Drama Club Presents ‘Alice In Wonderland’ On March 22-24In “Education”5 Things To Do In Wilmington On Thursday, March 21, 2019In “5 Things To Do Today”5 Things To Do In Wilmington On Friday, March 22, 2019In “5 Things To Do Today”read more

NASA/Joel Kowsky/(NASA/Joel Kowsky)Earl Maize (left), Cassini program manager at JPL, and Julie Webster, spacecraft operations team manager for the Cassini mission at Saturn, embrace after the Cassini spacecraft plunged into Saturn on Friday at precisely 7:55 a.m. ETUpdated at 8:15 a.m. ETControllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory sent a final command Friday morning to the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. Not long after, accounting for the vast distance the message traveled, the order was received, putting the craft into a suicidal swan dive in which it plummeted into the ringed planet’s atmosphere.Flight Director Julie Webster called “loss of signal” at about 7:55 a.m. ET, followed by Project Manager Earl Maize announcing “end of mission” as the spacecraft began to break up in Saturn’s atmosphere.“Congratulations to you all,” Maize announced to applause. “It’s been an incredible mission, incredible spacecraft, and you’re all an incredible team.” NASA/JPLStill from a computer-animated film depicting Cassini’s final orbits.Earth received @CassiniSaturn’s final signal at 7:55am ET. Cassini is now part of the planet it studied. Thanks for the science #GrandFinale pic.twitter.com/YfSTeeqbz1— NASA (@NASA) September 15, 2017 With Cassini running on empty and no gas station for about a billion miles, NASA decided to go out Thelma & Louise-style. But rather than careen into a canyon, the plucky probe took a final plunge into the object of its obsession.Just how obsessed? Its 13-year mission to explore the strange world of Saturn went on nearly a decade longer than planned. It completed 293 orbits of the planet, snapped 400,000 photos, collected 600 gigabytes of data, discovered at least seven new moons, descended into the famed rings and sent its Huygens lander to a successful 2005 touchdown on the surface of yet another moon, Titan.First, Cassini had to get to Saturn. The year it blasted off, 1997, the “information superhighway” was just getting up to speed. By the time it arrived, in 2004, people were fretting over what to reveal on their Facebook profiles.On its way to the sixth planet, Cassini set about a circuitous course, swinging by Venus twice to get a gravity assist that shot it back past Earth and onward to Jupiter before a final marathon leg to Saturn.The twin Voyagers swung by Saturn in the 1970s and ’80s, giving scientists a rough outline of the planet and its moons. Cassini has filled in many of the details, giving us an unparalleled look.Much of what Cassini found concerned Saturn’s moons. Among other things, the probe discovered water spewing from Enceladus, discovered that Hyperion has a statically charged surface and that Saturn’s entire moon system — a virtual mini solar system in itself — exchanges dust and chunks of material with the planet’s ring system.“Two of those moons have been of particular interest,” NPR’s Joe Palca reports from JPL headquarters in Pasadena, Calif. “Titan, with its methane lakes and Enceladus, with its geysers of salty water. Scientists speculate that both moons may have the right conditions to harbor some form of life, although Cassini did not have instruments capable of detecting life.”One of Cassini’s crowning achievements came in April of this year, as it spun through a narrow gap in Saturn’s rings, beaming back images and making scientific measurements along the way.Why end the mission? Although Cassini’s main power is supplied by radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs — essentially nuclear batteries that were still going at mission’s end — the fuel supply for the probe’s main engine and backup was believed to be running low.“We don’t have a gas gauge. It would be really nice if we did,” Molly Bittner, a systems engineer at JPL who has worked on Cassini for the past four years, tells NPR. Instead, mission controllers had to estimate the amount of fuel used by each maneuver. And there had been lots of maneuvers since 2004.NPR’s Adam Cole, who helped produce a video commemorating the spacecraft’s life and times, says: “Scientists [were] worried that when [Cassini] loses power, it could crash into a pristine moon, contaminating a place where we might someday search for life.”However, there’s another reason for ending the mission in such a spectacular fashion: “We have the opportunity to do some really cool science,” Bittner says.While Cassini has discovered a lot of interesting things about Saturn, its ring system and its moons, there’s one thing it hasn’t been able to pin down with certainty — how long a Saturnian day lasts.“It’s a little bit embarrassing to confess, but we don’t know how long a day is on Saturn,” Michele Dougherty of Imperial College in London tells NPR’s Palca. She’s the scientist in charge of Cassini’s magnetometer, an instrument that measures Saturn’s magnetic field.Dougherty is hoping that as Cassini spiraled into the atmosphere, the onboard magnetometer detected a telltale tilt in the magnetic field that should resolve the uncertainty over the length of a Saturnian day, Joe reports.Bittner says that in the final moments of Cassini’s life, another instrument, the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer, or INMS, was to open up, sucking in the atmosphere to figure out what it’s made of.Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. Shareread more

The internal email obtained by the AFRO is crisp and to the point. A Baltimore police lieutenant orders subordinates to submit statistics every two hours recounting the number of car stops, warrants and citizen contacts for each officer under their supervision. It is a demand for an immediate statistical tally of what an officer does, or does not do while on the job.“Starting today, every 2 hours you are to collect stats from each officer” the lieutenant writes. “If you have an officer that gives you nothing,” the email continues, “then give that officer specific direction of what you need from them.”The email then lists a variety of activities that supervisors should measure and submit for evaluation including checking in on residents on the city’s gun offender registry and initiating field interviews.It’s a document that suggests the Baltimore Police Department has not completely forsaken statistics as a metric for measuring officers. It’s a controversial strategy tied to past policies like Zero Tolerance that makes some law enforcement experts leery and has been at the heart of the criticism of contemporary policing as far too dependent on numbers.Baltimore police spokesman T.J Smith confirmed the authenticity of the email, but says it is well within the purview of a commanding officer to manage his staff as he or she sees fit.“This was sent by a commander of a shift who has the ability to command his officers in the manner in which he sees appropriate,” Smith told the AFRO in an email.“Officers should be constantly focused, and he is holding them accountable to that. The commander is following up on his direction by asking for information to confirm that his direction is being met.”But other law enforcement experts say the policy hearkens back to statistics driven policing that departs from recent efforts by the department to reconnect with residents, especially in the aftermath of a damning report by the Department of Justice that found the Baltimore police had engaged in discriminatory and unconstitutional tactics.“When your strategy is stat driven, it can separate the officer from the community because policing becomes all about numbers,” said Sgt. Louis Hopson, the lead plaintiff in a landmark civil rights lawsuit against the BPD.“I think it shows that they don’t have a comprehensive city-wide plan to address crime, this is just going back to old dynamics,” Hopson added.Indeed, the memo seems at odds with recent remarks by Police Commissioner Kevin Davis about the department’s long-term strategy. Particularly when he announced the formation of a team focused on targeting repeat offenders. Davis justified the move, in part, by citing an overworked patrol division constantly answering calls for service, a division he characterized as hardly in need of statistical monitoring.But Smith defended the email arguing it does in fact jibe with the direction of the agency, especially the email’s focus on taking guns off the streets.“This commander reiterated the focus- gun offenders (and) wanted persons and activity,” Smith said. “I think this is certainly one of the areas of direction the Commissioner has been focused on.”Some say an emphasis on producing statistics could have unintended consequences. Doug Colbert, law professor at the University of Maryland’s Francis Carey School of Law, said the memo’s ambiguous wording could leave officers confused and prone to generate numbers that don’t always produce the best results.“It’s a poorly worded memo that could be interpreted that command is not pleased with what officers are doing and expect them to do more,” Colbert explained, after reviewing the email.“But they’re not saying we want you to have more conversation with the community, this is more punitive type of law enforcement.”read more

By James Wright, Special to the AFRO, jwright@afro.comThe Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 48th Annual Legislative Conference is taking place from September 12-16 in the District of Columbia and there is something for everyone who attends.The CBC Conference is co-chaired for the first time by U.S. senators, Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). The conference has scores of issue forums and braintrusts on a variety of topics ranging from foreign policy, civil rights, juvenile justice, entertainment, health and wellness, political and voter engagement, religion and education.Angela Rye of CNN is one of the speakers at the CBCF’s Annual Legislative Conference. (Courtesy Photo)There are academicians, political, social and cultural activists, artists and politicians from every level of government as well as leaders from foreign countries participating in the issue forums and braintrusts.Many of the activities take place at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and Bishop Michael Curry, who received worldwide attention for his address at the wedding of the Prince Harry and Meghan Markle earlier this year, are participating in the National Town Hall meeting that takes place on September 13. The theme of the event is “Rise Up: Equality Delayed is Equality Denied.”Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum has been invited to speak on September 14 on a panel sponsored by U.S. Rep. Al Lawson (D-Fla.) FAMU Made: “From Mayor to Mainstreet” that talks about the contributions that Florida A&M University graduates have made in the public sector.The highly-anticipated and well-attended Prayer Breakfast features vocalist Kurt Carr and guest speaker AME Bishop Vashti McKenzie on Sept. 15 at the convention center.“The Prayer Breakfast presents a unique opportunity for attendees to unite in the spirit of hope, faith and love during the Annual Legislative Conference,” A. Shuanise Washington, CBCF president and CEO, said. “As the inspirational high note of the week, we can raise our voices in song and praise while recharging ourselves for the vital work that is still to be done within our community.”The Rev. William Barber II, former president of the North Carolina NAACP and an activist for the poor, is the speaker for the Phoenix Awards Dinner on September 15 also at the convention center.The Community Breakfast and Health Fair will take place on Sept. 13 at the Central Union Mission on Massachusetts Ave., N.W. with CBC members, staff and friends serving the homeless.read more

SharePrint <a href=’http://revive.newsbook.com.mt/www/delivery/ck.php?n=ab2c8853&amp;cb={random}’ target=’_blank’><img src=’https://revive.newsbook.com.mt/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=97&amp;cb={random}&amp;n=ab2c8853&amp;ct0={clickurl_enc}’ border=’0′ alt=” /></a> Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Promotion, Carmelo Abela, has warned of more daring smugglers and traffickers in Central Mediterranean, following the absence of operation EUNAVFORMED.During an EU Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg City, Minister Abela told his EU colleagues that the absence of this operation’s naval assets in its area of operation is not helping maintain security in the Mediterranean.He continued by reiterating the strategic importance of the operation, which was established in 2015 to contribute to wider EU efforts to disrupt the business model of human smuggling and trafficking networks in the Southern Central Mediterranean and prevent the further loss of migrants’ lives at sea.Minister Abela took his cue from the 6th South EU Summit that convened in Valletta last Friday, pointing out that an important element of the Valletta Declaration issued at the end of that Summit is security in the Mediterranean Sea, which is crucial for Europe’s own security and stability.WhatsAppread more